By Steve Hargreaves
5 December 2011DOHA, Qatar (CNNMoney) -- Representatives from a half-dozen OPEC nations acknowledged Monday what many U.S. politicians won't -- that global warming is indeed a problem.
The representatives attending the World Petroleum Congress -- a week-long gathering of oil industry executives and government officials held every three years -- outlined steps their countries are taking to move toward cleaner, renewable energy.
"Increasing climate effects are an unquestionable reality," said Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar. "Developing clean and renewable resources is a goal fully supported by oil and gas exporters."
The opening session of the conference focused on ways the Middle East can help solve the world's energy challenge: dealing with the dependency on a dirty form of fuel that's becoming ever more expensive and will someday run out.
Of course, increasing investment in oil production is a top priority.
The minister from Bahrain detailed several new projects his country is undertaking, and the Kuwaiti minister said his country plans on investing $180 billion over the next two decades in oil field development.
With that investment, Kuwait hopes to increase its oil output to 4 million barrels a day from the current 3 million barrels a day as early as 2020.
But oil ministers from Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates also talked about solar projects their nations are building. Those projects are still modest in size compared to projects in the United States, Spain or other places, but include plans for big expansion going forward. […]
Monday, December 5, 2011
OPEC: We want clean energy – ‘Increasing climate effects are an unquestionable reality’
Monday, February 7, 2011
Age of sail boats inspires green solutions for ocean cargo
By George Webster for CNN
December 27, 2010 2:14 a.m. ESTLondon (CNN) -- With its long hull, towering masts and expansive sails, it resembles a schooner from the 19th century. But fitted with a series of high-tech features, this so-called "sail ship" is designed to cut carbon emissions on the high seas today.
Part of a fleet of carbon-neutral, wind-powered sail ships planned by Britain's B9 Energy, it's just one example of how companies are looking to the past for greener alternatives to the gas-guzzling vessels that transport the world's cargo.
When it comes to wind power replacing fuel in shipping vessels, "it's not a question of if, but when," according to David Surplus, the chairman of B9 Energy, Britain's largest windfarm operator.
"By most people's estimates, we have reached peak oil -- sooner or later the fuel will run out and there will simply be no alternative," said Surplus.
Roughly 87% of international trade is carried out by the shipping industry, figures from the International Maritime Organization show.
With the majority of world trade traveling by sea, the shipping industry is responsible for around 4% of global carbon emissions, according to the latest figures available from the United Nations.
B9 claims its vessel will be the first commercially produced merchant ship to harness alternative energy, but it certainly isn't alone in using old-fashioned sail boats to move goods.
"At the moment it's happening on a fairly small, fairly local scale," said Jan Lundberg, founder of Sail Transport Network, a group that promotes sailing as a means of eco-friendly, cost-efficient trade.
But the trend is growing, he said, pointing to examples like El Lago Coffee Company, which uses traditional sail boats to ship Guatemalan coffee beans to the United States, and the Sail Transport Company, a Seattle-based group that uses sailboats to deliver "petroleum-free organic produce."
B9's new eco-friendly ships, planned to be in production by 2012, signify a return to a much more traditional form of merchant shipping. Before diesel-powered steel tankers came to dominate the seas, international trade was conducted on vast, wooden sail ships.
The 100% carbon-neutral freighter will feature automated, self-adjusting sails that respond to minute changes in the wind to maximize propulsion. The boat will also take advantage of "skysail" technology -- a kite-styled towing system currently used on some cargo ships to improve fuel efficiency. …
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
World Oil Production Forecast - Update May 2009
From The Oil Drum:
World oil production peaked in July 2008 at 74.82 million barrels/day (mbd) and now has fallen to about 71 mbd. It is expected that oil production will decline slowly to about December 2010 as OPEC production increases while non-OPEC production decreases. After 2010 the resulting annual production decline rate increases to 3.4% as OPEC production is unable to offset cumulative non-OPEC declines. The forecast from the IEA WEO 2008 is also shown for comparison.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) should make official statements about declining world oil production now to renew the focus on oil conservation and alternative renewable energy sources.
World Oil Production
World crude oil, condensate and oil sands production peaked in 2008 at an average of 73.78 million barrels per day (mbd) which just exceeded the previous peak of 73.74 mbd in 2005, according to recent EIA production data. Production is expected to decline further as non OPEC oil production peaked in 2004 and is forecast to decline at a faster rate in 2009 and beyond due mainly to big declines from Russia, Norway, the UK and Mexico. Saudi Arabia's crude oil production peaked in 2005. By 2011, OPEC will not have the ability to offset cumulative non OPEC declines and world oil production is forecast to stay below its 2008 peak. …
World Oil Production Forecast - Update May 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Colin Campbell and 100 months of Peak Oil
By Kjell Aleklett
Colin Campbell has now written newsletters for 100 months. 100 months is a long tenure. In his first letter he introduced the world to a new term, ”Peak Oil”. I first made contact with Colin by email in the autumn of 2000 when I needed a little information for a figure and I believe that it was in December of the same year that I first spoke with him by telephone. He was then writing that which would become newsletter number 1. He spoke about the idea of an organisation that would study the peak of oil production and the name ”Association for the Study of the Oil Peak” was mentioned. But the acronym ASOP did not roll off the tongue in the right way so the suggestion to swap the words around to say Peak Oil was discussed. The acronym became ASPO and the term ”Peak Oil” was coined.
Today, ”Peak Oil” is an expression that is used around the world. The Parliament of the Walloon Region of Belgium has even formed a new standing committee for Peak Oil. Around the world, presidents, national inquiries, parliamentary interrogations etc. have put Peak Oil on the agenda. I just made a search on Google using the exact term “Peak Oil” and found 2,700,000 hits. Peak Oil is spreading around the world like wildfire. Colin Campbell and ASPO have, for all time, written their names into history. When the history books of the future discuss the first half of the 21st century Peak Oil will be part of that history.
Colin Campbell means and has meant so much for so many. He has changed my entire life. Without Colin’s support it would never have been possible to begin the research work that my group now undertakes at Uppsala University. We now have the opportunity to describe in academic publications many of the ideas that Colin has had regarding the world’s future oil production. The world’s first ”Peak Oil” Ph.D. defended his doctoral thesis in 2007, and Colin was one of the supervisors. Colin has always asserted that ”depletion” is the decisive parameter for the world’s future and we support him. Decline in oilfields is also very important and we can now show that the maximal depletion is the same as the decline.
Colin concluded his 100th newsletter with these lines:
“This is the hundredth and final Edition of the newsletter. It has been a stimulating experience engendering a deep sense of gratitude to all those who have supported the endeavour with such enthusiasm, many to become close personal friends.” …
Colin Campbell and 100 months of Peak Oil
Japan honours 'Limits to Growth' science author
TOKYO (AFP) — Japan on Thursday awarded its top science prize to a US researcher who decades ago predicted that rapid economic and population growth on a finite planet would lead to the collapse of civilisation.
Professor Dennis Meadows led a research team that in the 1972 study "The Limits to Growth," using a computer model called World3, forecast that on current trends humanity was headed for doom by 2100.
Meadows, of the US Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was the lead author of the study, which became a best-seller but was also attacked as alarmist and opposed to technology and progress.
Emperor Akihito watched Thursday as Meadows, 65, received the 500,000-dollar annual Japan Prize from the country's Science and Technology Foundation for "transformation towards a sustainable society in harmony with nature."
In his study, Meadows argued that "human demand exceeds nature's supply."
Unless the human race switched from exponential population and economic growth to a sustainable system, his team argued, they would "overshoot" the Earth's limits, leading to the collapse of human civilisation.
More than three decades on -- a time span in which the world population has grown from less than four billion to more than six billion -- Meadows said that today he sees even fewer signs of hope.
"In 1972, our projections suggested growth would end in this 21st century, and that still seems inevitable to me," he told a Tokyo conference this week.
"If demand against the planet rises above its carrying capacity, the carrying capacity will decline," he said.
"Growth will not end gradually and peacefully in the distant future. It will end soon and suddenly through overshoot and collapse." …
Japan honours 'Limits to Growth' science author
Friday, April 24, 2009
‘Limits to Growth’ predictions surprisingly accurate after 37 years
From The Oil Drum:
This post relates to an article written by my advisor Charles Hall and a close friend of his. The article is available online, but is behind a paywall for nonacademic IPs.
There are only finite resources in the world, but population continues to grow. How will this situation resolve itself? This was a question a group of scientists (Meadows et al), commissioned by the "Club of Rome," attempted to answer back in 1972, in a book called Limits to Growth. The model they presented predicted growing resource scarcity, increasing pollution, and eventual population decline, all prior to 2100.
Charles A. S. Hall and John W. Day revisit these predictions in an article published this month in American Scientist called Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil. Their analysis indicates that the predictions from 1972 were surprisingly accurate, considering how long ago they were made:
According to Hall and Day, "The values predicted by the limits-to-growth model and actual data for 2008 are very close." …
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Transition Towns USA in the New York Times
New York Times Offers Profile of Transition Towns
I need to read the New York Times more often. Doing one of my regular check ins on Transition Culture, the blog of Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins, I find that the NYT just ran a 5000 word article profiling the Transition Towns movement, and getting to meet the folks behind Transition Town Sandpoint, Idaho. I've probably made it pretty clear by now that I am a huge fan of the Transition movement - it may well be the most important social movement of our time. So it is great to see the word spreading far and wide in the US. The NYT article, by Jon Mooalem, is a great example of exactly why the movement is succeeding in preaching way beyond the choir (and highlights, I think, some pitfalls too). …
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Newsweek and “Cheap Oil forever”
By Kjell Aleklett, President of ASPO International, Association for the Study of Peak Oil&Gas, www.peakoil.net. Professor in Global Energy Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden, www.fysast.uu.se/ges
Newsweek’s cover declares that we shall have ”Cheap Oil Forever”. …
As individuals we need 2500 kcal of energy in food per day and this means that the world’s population needs 7100 TWh per year. Expressed as the equivalent amount of energy in oil this is 610 Mtoe or 4.2 billion barrels of oil. If one remembers that part of grain production is seed for sowing the following year’s crops then the world’s annual agricultural production constitutes a net food energy amount of 9400 TWh. This means that there is currently just enough food energy for the world’s population. However, for agriculture to produce 1000 kcal of food energy it requires 1600 kcal of oil equivalents on the farm. When that food has finally reached the dinner table in the USA the energy that was required has grown to 7500 kcal and most of that was from oil. This means that a large part of the world’s oil production is required just to prevent starvation. …
Newsweek and “Cheap Oil forever”
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Graph of the Day: Oil production decline rates
From The Oil Drum:
This post offers a kind of reverse engineering of what numbers could be behind the long and detailed IEA decline analysis in their last report (2008 IEA WEO). A tentative decline structure for the post-peak Super-Giant and Giants oilfields is offered as well as a possible scenario for future production. The conclusions are:
- It seems that the yearly decline rate of the post-peak resource base may accelerate to 10% until 2011 and then stabilize back toward 4.35%. This acceleration is due to the rapid decline rates for Large and Small oil fields (around 10%). Coincidentally, this value is the total decline rate value implicitly used by the IEA in their final forecast (see discussion here).
- 83.0% of the 2007 conventional oil resource base (69.8 mbpd in 2007) is coming from post-peak fields.
- The contribution from Super-Giants, Giants may have reached a broad plateau around 41 mbpd.
- Production may slide rapidly over 3-4 years past 2009 due to a short bust in decline of the resource base then reach a gentler decline regime past 2012. …
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Graph of the Day: Non-OPEC Crude Oil Production, 2004-2008
From The Oil Drum:
There you have it, folks. Crude oil production in non-OPEC nations peaked in 2004. It’s all downhill from here.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Worst threat to oil supplies? Rust, warns Simmons
Peak oil guru Matthew Simmons — featured in a fascinating recent Forbes piece titled, “Crude Cassandra” — isn’t changing his tune in the face of collapsing oil prices. In fact, he warns that today’s low price per barrel creates two serious financial challenges for the oil industry: underwriting ongoing exploration and combating the continuous threat of rust to its infrastructure.
As aging oil platforms, drilling rigs and pipelines keep rusting, Simmons says, they’ll need to be replaced if the crude is to keep flowing. How many new ones are needed? $100 trillion (US) worth, he says.
That, Forbes notes, is equal to the oil industry’s total revenues over the past seven decades.
Have a nice day.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Oil exec: Global production has peaked
Global oil production is at or near its peak, and will likely never exceed 89 million barrels per day, according to the CEO of French energy company Total.
The Financial Times today reported that Christophe de Margerie has adjusted downward his most recent forecast for oil production in 2015, largely because of the global economic meltdown and the dramatic plunge in oil prices over the past seven months.
While oil consumption is not expected to increase this year — a first — the current glut of supplies isn’t likely to last for long, de Margerie said. While future demand might grow, consumption in coming years will be limited by increasingly restricted supplies.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, world oil consumption is expected to drop by 1.2 million barrels per day in 2009, then rebound by a similar amount next year.
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